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Articles 1 - 11 of 11

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Too Many Choices Confuse Patients With Dementia, Ronald C. Hamdy, J. V. Lewis, Amber Kinser, Audrey Depelteau, Rebecca Copeland, Tracey Kendall-Wilson, Kathleen Whalen Aug 2018

Too Many Choices Confuse Patients With Dementia, Ronald C. Hamdy, J. V. Lewis, Amber Kinser, Audrey Depelteau, Rebecca Copeland, Tracey Kendall-Wilson, Kathleen Whalen

Amber E. Kinser

Choices are often difficult to make by patients with Alzheimer Dementia. They often become acutely confused when faced with too many options because they are not able to retain in their working memory enough information about the various individual choices available. In this case study, we describe how an essentially simple benign task (choosing a dress to wear) can rapidly escalate and result in a catastrophic outcome. We examine what went wrong in the patient/caregiver interaction and how that potentially catastrophic situation could have been avoided or defused.


Repetitive Questioning Ii, Ronald C. Hamdy, Amber Kinser, A. Depelteau, J. V. Lewis, Rebecca Copeland, Tracey Kendall-Wilson, Kathleen Whalen Aug 2018

Repetitive Questioning Ii, Ronald C. Hamdy, Amber Kinser, A. Depelteau, J. V. Lewis, Rebecca Copeland, Tracey Kendall-Wilson, Kathleen Whalen

Amber E. Kinser

Repetitive questioning is a major problem for caregivers, particularly taxing if they are unable to recognize and understand the reasons why their loved one keeps asking the same question over and over again. Caregivers may be tempted to believe that the patient does not even try to remember the answer given or is just getting obnoxious. This is incorrect. Repetitive questioning is due to the underlying disease: The patient’s short term memory is impaired and he is unable to register, encode, retain and retrieve the answer. If he is concerned about a particular topic, he will keep asking the same …


Driving And Patients With Dementia, Ronald C. Hamdy, Amber Kinser, Tracey Kendall-Wilson, Audrey Depelteau, K. Whalen, J. Culp Aug 2018

Driving And Patients With Dementia, Ronald C. Hamdy, Amber Kinser, Tracey Kendall-Wilson, Audrey Depelteau, K. Whalen, J. Culp

Amber E. Kinser

Driving is a symbol of autonomy and independence, eagerly awaited during adolescence, cherished during adulthood and reluctantly rescinded during old age. It is nevertheless an individual’s privilege, not right, especially as driving may affect other drivers and pedestrians on the road. It is therefore not only the individual patient who is at stake but essentially the entire community. In this case scenario, we describe the situation that arose when a patient with multi-infarct dementia wanted to go for a drive and his son and grandson tried to convince him that he could no longer drive. What went wrong in the …


Patients With Dementia Are Easily Distracted, Ronald C. Hamdy, Amber Kinser, Audrey Depelteau, Tracey Kendall-Wilson, J. V. Lewis, Kathleen Whalen Aug 2018

Patients With Dementia Are Easily Distracted, Ronald C. Hamdy, Amber Kinser, Audrey Depelteau, Tracey Kendall-Wilson, J. V. Lewis, Kathleen Whalen

Amber E. Kinser

Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is the middle ground between normal, age-appropriate memory impairment, and dementia. Whereas patients with MCI are able to cope with the memory deficit, those with dementia are not: Their memory impairment and other cognitive deficits are of sufficient magnitude to interfere with the patients’ ability to cope independently with daily activities. In both MCI and dementia, there is evidence of declining cognitive functions from a previously higher level of functioning. In both the conditions, there is also an evidence of dysfunction in one or more cognitive domains. There are two subtypes of MCI depending on whether …


Fronto-Temporal Dementia, Diabetes Mellitus And Excessive Eating, Ronald C. Hamdy, Amber Kinser, Kara Dickerson, Tracey Kendall-Wilson, Audrey Depelteau, Kathleen Whalen Aug 2018

Fronto-Temporal Dementia, Diabetes Mellitus And Excessive Eating, Ronald C. Hamdy, Amber Kinser, Kara Dickerson, Tracey Kendall-Wilson, Audrey Depelteau, Kathleen Whalen

Amber E. Kinser

Diabetes mellitus is common among older people. Hypoglycemia is a sign of poorly controlled diabetes mellitus and may lead to irritability, agitation, anxiety, hunger, and an excessive food intake, which in turn may make the control of diabetes more difficult. Excessive, inappropriate food intake is also a sign of Fronto-Temporal Dementia (behavioral variant: bvFTD). In this case study, we describe the events leading to an altercation that developed between an older diabetic patient with bvFTD and the staff in an Assisted Living Facility. His first dose of insulin was given early that morning while he was still asleep. He, subsequently, …


Impulsive, Disinhibited Behavior—Dining In A Restaurant, Ronald C. Hamdy, Amber Kinser, Tracey Kendall-Wilson, Audrey Depelteau, Kathleen Whalen Aug 2018

Impulsive, Disinhibited Behavior—Dining In A Restaurant, Ronald C. Hamdy, Amber Kinser, Tracey Kendall-Wilson, Audrey Depelteau, Kathleen Whalen

Amber E. Kinser

Dining in a restaurant with a loved one who has dementia can be an ordeal, especially if the expectations of the caregiver do not match those of the patient and the restaurant environment is not suitable for patients with dementia. The size of the dining area, lighting, background music or noise, décor of the room, number of customers, variety of the items on the menu, number of plates and cutlery on the table, in addition to flowers, candles, and other decorations on the table are all potent distractors. There are so many stimuli; the patient can be overwhelmed with information …


Insomnia And Mild Cognitive Impairment, Ronald C. Hamdy, Amber Kinser, Kara Dickerson, C Kendall-Wilson, Audrey Depelteau, Rebecca Copeland, Kathleen Whalen Aug 2018

Insomnia And Mild Cognitive Impairment, Ronald C. Hamdy, Amber Kinser, Kara Dickerson, C Kendall-Wilson, Audrey Depelteau, Rebecca Copeland, Kathleen Whalen

Amber E. Kinser

Insomnia is a common problem in older people, especially in patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) whose circadian rhythm is often compromised. Insomnia exerts such a toll on caregivers that it is frequently the primary reason for seeking to institutionalize their loved ones. Three different types of insomnia are recognized: sleep-onset or initial insomnia, sleep maintenance or middle insomnia, and early morning awakening or late insomnia. Nocturnal hypoglycemia, as a cause of middle insomnia, is the main focus of this case study. Other types of insomnia are also briefly reviewed. The management of insomnia is then discussed including sleep hygiene, …


Agnosia Interferes With Daily Hygiene In Patients With Dementia, Ronald C. Hamdy, Amber Kinser, Jennifer E. Culp, Tracey Kendall-Wilson, Audrey Depelteau, Rebecca Copeland, Kathleen Whalen Aug 2018

Agnosia Interferes With Daily Hygiene In Patients With Dementia, Ronald C. Hamdy, Amber Kinser, Jennifer E. Culp, Tracey Kendall-Wilson, Audrey Depelteau, Rebecca Copeland, Kathleen Whalen

Amber E. Kinser

Patients with dementia, particularly Alzheimer’s disease, may not recognize that their clothes are dirty. They may see the food stains and discoloration of the clothes and yet because of their agnosia are unable to integrate these observations and deduce that their clothes are dirty and need to be changed. They will, therefore, resist attempts to get them to change clothes, especially if these clothes happen to be their favorite ones. This often causes caregivers to become frustrated, especially, if it represents a change in the patient’s previous habits of only wearing clean clothes. In this case study, we present a …


Holding On By Letting Go: Personal Agency As Maternal Activism, Amber E. Kinser Dec 2017

Holding On By Letting Go: Personal Agency As Maternal Activism, Amber E. Kinser

Amber E. Kinser

Despite the efforts of maternal advocates and feminists through 150 years or more, a great many mothers today feel dissatisfied, shortchanged, and/or inadequate in their own lives. Even those who have reckoned with the fact that standards for mothering are absurdly out of synch with the real lives that families are living in contemporary times, or have carved out comfortable personal and familial space for themselves just beyond, or far beyond, the margins of mainstream motherhood ideologies, often struggle nevertheless with a needling sense of unrest and lack of personal agency. Further, women who agree that maternal empowerment is an …


Mothered, Mothering & Motherizing In Illness Narratives: What Women Cancer Survivors In Southern Central Appalachia Reveal About Mothering-Disruption, Kelly A. Dorgan, Kathryn L. Duvall, Sadie P. Hutson, Amber E. Kinser Dec 2017

Mothered, Mothering & Motherizing In Illness Narratives: What Women Cancer Survivors In Southern Central Appalachia Reveal About Mothering-Disruption, Kelly A. Dorgan, Kathryn L. Duvall, Sadie P. Hutson, Amber E. Kinser

Amber E. Kinser

Informed by a mothering-disruption framework, our study examines the illness narratives of women cancer survivors living in Southern Central Appalachia. We collected the stories of twenty-nine women cancer survivors from northeast Tennessee and southwest Virginia using a multi-phasic qualitative design. Phase I consisted of women cancer survivors participating in a day-long story circle (n=26). Phase II consisted of women cancer survivors who were unable to attend the story circle ; this sample sub-set participated in in-depth interviews (n=3) designed to capture their illness narratives. Participants' illness narratives revealed the presence of: (1) mothering-disruption whereby cancer adversely impacted the mothering role …


Book Review Of Mothers And Daughters: Complicated Connections Across Cultures, Amber E. Kinser Dec 2017

Book Review Of Mothers And Daughters: Complicated Connections Across Cultures, Amber E. Kinser

Amber E. Kinser

Excerpt: As both a daughter to a mother and a mother to a daughter, I have lived, and pushed against, and been formed by, the profound truth about mother-daughter relationships suggested by this book's title: it's complicated.